Fate's Greatest Mistake
by Smoochynose
Summary: It was an accident. It was never meant to happen. Fate messed up. The boy was never meant to live. Harry Potter should have died that night. Oneshot


Summary: It was an accident. It was never meant to happen. Fate messed up. The boy was never meant to live. Harry Potter should have died that night. Books 1-7 from Fate's point of view.

* * *

**Fate's Greatest Mistake**

* * *

It was an accident. It was never meant to happen. Fate messed up. The boy was never meant to live. Harry Potter should have died that night. Sirius Black would have stayed and mourned the loss long enough for Peter to be declared the traitor, whilst the man would have saved the Longbottoms from insanity at the last moment.

Neville Longbottom would have grown up with enough confidence to become the chosen child of the prophecy. Evidence that the Longbottoms gave would lead to the discovery of the Horcruxes almost fifteen years earlier and all of them would them would be destroyed before Voldemort regained a body, finishing the man off before his second rising.

But Fate messed up. She looked away for just one second. She hadn't counted on Death's allegiances to the Potter family. Ever since the youngest Peverell brother Death had grown fond of the family, letting them off in situations where they would have otherwise died and, if not, offering them quick and painless deaths.

Fate underestimated Death's loyalty to the young Potter that he had grown especially fond of. When Fate turned away, not watching to see her task completed, Death took pity on the child when all odds claimed the boy should die.

Death broke the rules he had set himself.

Over the years Fate tried to rectify her mistake. She made the child's relatives beyond cruel to the boy but despite that he survived. She made the boy encounter Voldemort twice in his first year at Hogwarts and still he managed to escape, and, with Death adamantly claiming it was not the boy's time to die when it had been decided long ago that he should already be dead, he lived long enough in second year to retrieve the cure for the basilisk venom.

Fate had been disgruntled for yet again being foiled by Death, unused to the spirit not agreeing with her plans. Ever since the beginning they had worked as one. It had never happened before and it frustrated her. She decided it was time to free Sirius from Azkaban, hoping the man's freedom would spark Pettigrew into attacking Harry but her earlier plans, making the man cowardly enough to turn spy, made it not so.

Yet again Fate changed her plans to fix her mistake.

She let Pettigrew escape, preventing Sirius from being declared innocent and allowing Voldemort to rise again in Harry's fourth year, where the boy escaped her plans once again, proving himself a survivor. She had been angry with that. Never had anyone evaded her plans before, let alone on numerous occasions.

She decided to punish him, subtly making Voldemort choose to stay in the dark and have the Ministry send Umbridge into Hogwarts. Fate was a cruel bitch when things did not go her way, something she proved at the Department of Mysteries.

Harry Potter once again evaded her as Sirius Black came to his rescue and so she cut the man's ties to life, costing Harry his guiding figure but there was another who ruined her plans for Harry that night. Albus Dumbledore saved the boy too, so she guided him to the one Horcrux that he would ignore all warnings about and watched vindictively as the man's arm shrivelled up, cursed.

However it wasn't enough, at the end of Harry's sixth year he avoided her plans again as the old man protected him and so she took the mentor of the boy, only to watch as the death made Harry grow determined.

He evaded each and every trap she made and, as his journey continued, she watched him become the first master of all three Hallows of Death and she finally understood why the spirit spared the child's life that night.

As Harry entered the forest, into yet another trap she had set, Fate finally realised her true mistake. Whilst trying to regain her pride and fix one small mistake she had caused the wizarding world to fall into ruins.

Fate felt none of the joy she had long awaited for as she watched Harry Potter die but was shocked beyond all reason when he survived the killing curse yet again. Death may have been willing to bend his rules once but she had never expected him to do so twice, especially under her watch.

Death had turned to her with ageless eyes. "He is not meant to die yet and even if I tried I would not have been able to take his life. His path had never been set by you."

"Then who set it?"

"He did. He shaped his own life. Watch."

And so she did. She watched Harry Potter correct the mistake she made that almost destroyed the wizarding world and all in it. She watched as he fixed the problems that would have remained if she had her way all those years ago.

She never touched his life after that, watching as he did things that she never planned for but should have. She let the dangers come to him, few and far between without her interference, and watched as the man faced them bravely, never losing.

Years went by and Harry Potter became a father and she guided his children safely to repay the man for what her interference cost him. She watched the man shower them with love that she had deprived him of as a child and marvelled once again in Harry's ability to survive anything that life and herself threw at him.

She watched as Death stirred beside her.

"Is it time?"

Death nodded, extending his hand to her.

Fate smiled and took it. It was time to meet Harry Potter, the greatest mistake she ever made and her favourite mortal.


End file.
